[rescue] qic drive.

[Mike Loewen]

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, john wrote:

> I have a 1990 +/- Sun 1/4 tape drive.B  The drive works fine but I
> haven't found a tape which wasn't dead from stretched internal drive
> belt in 10 years.B  There seems to be nothing that can be done. The last
> one I had that was ok enabled me to move the still functional belt from
> cartridge to cartridge while I recovered old backups from dark antiquity.
>
> I don't know what to suggest.B  There was an outfit on the west coast
> which offered to rescue these but I haven't seen any sign of them in years.

    Several of us have used Plastibands to replace the the dried out/broken 
belts in DC6150 cartridges. See this page:

https://qicreader.blogspot.com/p/drive-belts.html

    Your best bet is to pick up an assorted pack (SF7000), which may only 
contain 3-5 of the 6" green bands. The packs of only 6" bands (SF6500) are 
unobtanium.

> some day I have to get a 5 1/4 floppy drive and try to recover all of
> Dad's Osborne stuff.

    Don't wait too long. Pick up a 360K drive on Epay while they're still 
available.


Mike Loewen				mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology				http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/